What does it mean to be 'educated' in the 21st century?

Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.
(Charles Dickens, Hard Times)
Our notion of what it means to be an 'educated person' has been, and to some extent continues to be, dominated by the type of thinking satirized in the character of Gradgrind in Charles Dickens' Hard Times. We marvel at those who are able to exhibit almost superhuman feats of memorization and factual recall through TV game shows, quizzes and in our day-to-day dealings with other people. Although moves have been made to make courses more vocational in schools for some learners, the 'school leaving certificate' (or its equivalent) in western societies is nevertheless predicated upon the ability to demonstrate in written form the absorption and regurgitation of factual information. What it means to be 'educated', therefore, is to be someone who can pass 'high-stakes' examinations and recall facts at appropriate times.

The facts involved in this traditional view of what it means to be educated are those which society - or at least its dominant culture - deem to be important. Thus the next generation of learners are fed on a diet of factual information that the previous generation believe appropriate and necessary for them to be able to understand and function in the world that they will come to know. To be educated on the traditional view means to have absorbed what your ancestors (usually one's parents) believe to be important. New information, generated as a natural by-product of changes in society, is assimilated with that which was transmitted, then passed on to the next generation - and so on. When the amount of significant pieces of information to be added and passed on is manageable this model is able to work effectively: it is what apprenticeships and university degrees are based upon. However, difficulties arise when the amount of significant information starts to overwhelm individuals such that they feel somewhat 'lost at sea' - how can they help the next generation make sense of the world when they themselves are having problems with assimilation?

Some writers (after Machlup, 1962) have found the notion of the 'half-life of knowledge' to be a useful metaphor for understanding and making sense of the way in which knowledge becomes obsolete. Gonzalez (2004) writes, "The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation." Given this rate of change it is no wonder that systems of education have faced increasing crises over the past 50 years: what it was deemed important to know, and therefore learn in school, was obvious. What is important now in the 21st century, on the other hand, is more difficult to judge. The only certainty is that in the realm of knowledge, the ground held to be firm will exponentially decay leaving the individual uncertain unless something is done to remedy this situation.

Education, then, and conceptions of what it means to be an educated person, depend not upon the generation currently undergoing instruction, but upon the previous generation. The latter must help their descendants understand the world around them, making their learning meaningful and relevant (Carr, 2003: 25). To do so, as Claxton (2002: 22-23) writes, is to make value judgements and moral decisions:
But it also depends on whether the elders see their world as stable or changing, and on their image of the future. The goals of education are relative to the future which the 'elders' of a society forsee (Cole, 1996). If that future is imagined accurately, and the curriculum is appropriate, the ensuing education will be empowering. If the methods are ineffective, or if they develop skills that are unequal or inappropriate to the demands of the real world-to-be, then education fails. In a stable society, yesterday's education, if it was well designed originally, will do for the citizens of tomorrow. But if a culture is undergoing radical change, the demands of the future cannot be clearly predicted, and a different kind of preparation is required. If the main thing we know about the future is that we do not know much about it, then the key responsibility for the educator is not to give young people tools that may be out of date before they have even been fully mastered, but to help them become confident and competent designers and makers of their own tools as they go along.
Problems occur if educators do not recognise this need for change and the concomitant requirements for evolution/revolution of curricula. The difficulty is, as Delors (1996a) puts it, that there is a tension between marking out the way that has gone before whilst preparing individuals for a world that cannot be easily predicted:
Education must transmit, efficiently and on a massive scale, an increasing amount of constantly evolving knowledge and know-how adapted to a knowledge-driven civilization, because this forms the basis of the skills of the future. At the same time, it must find and mark the reference points that will make it possible, on the one hand, for people not to be overwhelmed by the flows of information, much of it ephemeral, that are invading the public and private domains and, on the other, to keep the development of individuals and communities as its end in view. Education must, as it were, simultaneously provide maps of a complex world in constant turmoil and the compass that will enable people to find their way in it.
Instead of simply focusing on the what of learning, educators must also concentrate on the how. In an environment where no one person can ever hope to 'know' everything even within a limited domain, collaboration and the processes behind the social construction of knowledge become increasingly important. Learning only has value if it lasts long enough to be put to use (Lemke, 2002: 35-6).

Individuals can only put knowledge and skills to use if they are 'literate' in the relevant domain. The concept of 'literacy' is a notion allied to conceptions of basic education, but given the rate of change of knowledge and the need for 'educated' people to have an increasingly wide skills base, becoming literate in an area is something with which school leavers as well as school attenders have to grapple. A salient example is that of computer literacy. Although this itself is a construct and referred to by different names (ICT literacy, technical literacy, etc.) there is no doubt that for an individual to leave school without being able to use a computer would place them at a huge disadvantage in 21st century society the and workplace. Martin (2003) calls this type of literacy 'e-literacy' which is the term I shall adopt for ease of use and clarity of expression. He sees technology as an enabler (Martin, 2003: 3), but only if students are e-literate:
Over the past few decades, the view of teaching and learning has changed dramatically. The emergence of student-focused learning models has led to re-examination of the activities of learning. At the same time, information technology (IT) has enabled new ways of setting up learning activities. In the IT-rich learning environment, students' achievement of IT (information technology) and information literacy becomes essential to their success as learners.
What is meant here is, as J.S. Town (2003: 53) puts it, more than the basic skills and procedural knowledge exemplified through such schemes as the European Computer Driving License (ECDL). 21st century literacy is more of an over-arching concept than being able to do such things as 'work a computer' (Reffell, 2003: 125-6):
Initiatives like the ECDL reinforce the idea that the technology, and the techniques required to work the technology, are the central concern of the learning process, rather than developing both the information skills required to work within an information environment, and the technical understanding required to use the appropriate tools... In order to participate in any kind of social sphere, one must be able to make informed choices about the society within which one exists or with which one wishes to engage. In the case of the so-called information society and our need, perceived or otherwise, to participate in it, we need to know how to use IT in an appropriate way.
It has been assumed that procedural knowledge in this arena leads automatically to reflexive understanding and an ability to apply this knowledge to new situations. However, this is not necessarily the case: as Postman (1993) states, technologies are ecological in that their introduction sends out ripples that rearrange relationships throughout the existing system. Technologies and the literacies that go with them have both implicit and explicit effects. Literacy in the 21st century, then, is not a basic proposition encapsulated by a mastery over the 3R's, but an evolving kaleidoscope of constructs that learners must piece together.

In the main, it is new technologies that disrupt pedagogies and practices as well as the knowledge which societies hold as 'sacred'. New generations must, like Icarus in the tale by Ovid, fly neither too close to the earth nor too close to the Sun (Burniske & Monke, 2001: 87). Synthesis comes in a Hegelian fashion by steering the path between thesis (the old ways) and antithesis (the new ways/opportunities). 21st century learners must become 'wise' in the sense defined by the Oxford English Dictionary in more domains than ever before, and quicker than their predecessors (Town, 2003:54):
Wisdom: Possession of expert knowledge together with the power of applying it practically.
To become an 'educated' person in the 21st century is to take control of one's own learning in order to stay up-to-date with knowledge and skills applicable and relevant to the situation one finds oneself.

Knowledge is no longer an end product, it is something which individuals in the 21st century use for particular purposes and to make sense of the world around them.* The technology available to educators and learners is such that collaborations can take place on subjects as narrowly-focused or as broadly-focused as desired. Being able to collaborate is another kind of 'literacy', if the term is defined (as I believe it should) as being able to communicate effectively in a given arena. The literacies that individuals master can be used to construct knowledge relevant to them and their 'web of beliefs'. In the western world we live in a knowledge society where the majority of people work using skills that exercise their brains rather than their muscles. In order to learn new skills in a domain some kind of functional literacy must already be present. As Burniske and Monke (2001) quote Bolter (1991) as saying, technology is not just about operating machines:
In the ancient world physical technology was simpler, and the ancients put a correspondingly greater emphasis on the skill of the craftsman - the potter, the stone-mason, or the carpenter. In his dialogue the Phaedrus, Plato calls the alphabet itself a techne. He would also have called the ancient book composed of ink on papyrus a techne; Homeric epic poetry was also a techne, as was Greek tragedy. All the ancient arts and crafts have this in common: that the craftsman must develop a skill, a technical state of mind in using tools and materials. Ancient and modern writing is a technology in just this sense. It is a method for arranging verbal thoughts in a visual space. The writer always needs a surface upon which to make his or her marks and a tool with which to make them, and these materials help to define the nature of the writing. Writing with quill and parchment is a different skill from writing with a printing press, which in turn differs from writing with a computer. (my emphasis)
Just as Gutenberg's printing press changed not only access to knowledge but undermined the authority of the Catholic church (Postman, 1993), so every new technology changes and re-shapes the world in which individuals dwell. As being an educated person under a 21st century definition entails lifelong learning and 'remaining literate' access to technology becomes not just desirable, but essential. Learners have to be able to navigate the 'high seas of knowledge' in order to make sense of the world and to communicate effectively and meaningfully with others. As Delors (1996b: 172) writes:
Given the considerable quantity of information available on information networks, accurate navigation through knowledge becomes a precondition of knowing. This competency is becoming what some people consider to be a new form of literacy. This 'computeracy' is becoming more and more of a necessity for proper understanding of the real world of today. It is thus a pre-eminent means of acceding to independence, enabling individuals to play their part as free and enlightened members of society.
In other words, and somewhat paradoxically, to understand the 'real' world in the 21st century, individuals have to be able to function in the virtual worlds of the Internet and other technology-mediated methods of communication. Given that individuals of the current youngest generation are what some have termed 'digital natives', the role of their teachers (mostly 'digital immigrants') must change. Instead of being repositories of knowledge they become, again to use terms which have become popular, the 'guide on the side' rather than the 'sage on the stage'. As Delors (1996b: 174) rather optimistically puts it, 'they become as it were partners in a collective fund of knowledge that is up to them to organize, positioning themselves firmly in the vanguard of change.'

Although some would disagree, and certainly some schools exemplify a hostility towards this, educational institutions are supposed to react to and reflect society. They are also supposed to anticipate changes to some extent and help create a better future for that society. Technology affects and changes society, which in turn affects how learners perceive and interact with the world and other people. Schools should change to reflect this. Talking in terms of universities, Langlois (1997) puts this quite succinctly:
A new type of student, computer-literate, will expect that his university and its teaching staff are equally familiar and equipped with new technologies. As a service to their students, universities have to enhance Information Technologies as, in future years, it will be widely spread in all areas of the labour market. Information literacy will be essential for all future employees. Modern students are now looking for more flexible learning patterns and universities must commit themselves to creating new learning environments.
New technologies will inevitably replace the need for some classroom instruction, but face-to-face contact will undoubtedly survive because of the intrinsically social nature of learning. The process of this teaching and learning, on the other hand, is likely to undergo fundamental changes. Although, as Muller (2000: 105) notes, the whole teaching profession would have to change if the curriculum was rearranged along, for example, competence-based lines, one definite advantage of the increasing use of technology is to point out just how stale and boring traditional teaching actually is (Burniske & Monke, 2001: 258). Some educational thinkers have envisioned an educational world set up more along the lines of an artists' studio. Lemke (2002: 45) puts forward the following utopian vision:
Schools will become places where students and their teachers decide together what comes next: collaborative projects, participatory internships, multimedia study modules, specialized learning activities, places to see and things to do. Students will participate in online peer-discussion groups, in cross-age groups where they can learn from older students and teach younger ones, and they will also have online access to a wide range of part-time mentors who mainly live and work in the world outside schools.
A report by UNESCO in 1972 expressed the fear that the world would be dehumanized as a result of technical change (Delors, 1996a: 94). Whilst technology can alienate as well as include, this idea is nevertheless based upon the idea of technology as a 'thing' rather than a means of expression and/or communication. To quote Dahlman and Nelson (1993), 'we should not think of technology as a 'thing'... as either hardware or software, but rather as 'the use of knowledge, means, processes, and organisations to produce goods and services.'

One of the best way to summarise the above is by quoting George Siemens who in Knowing Knowledge (2006) states that, 'knowledge has broken free from its moorings, its shackles'. That is to say there is a feeling that the very nature of knowledge (or at least our understanding/conception of it) is changing: knowledge is no longer something that resides solely in the minds of experts, but can also exist, for example, in networks. It has never been possible for an individual to be able to even approach learning the full extent of human knowledge, no matter in what age he lived. On the other hand, the purpose of mass education, at least as it was initially set up, was to initiate a person into each of the broad areas and give them at least a 'taste' of those forms. Thus we have school chemistry labs which, although very different from professional chemistry laboratories, serve to help young people grasp the fundamentals of the discipline. As Lemke (2002:37) states, the problem is that simplifying something so that it is the first rung on a ladder can mean it becomes too disconnected from the thing it is supposed to lead onto. It becomes a 'bridge to nowhere'.

The idea that education can be about initiation into subject areas rests on a presupposition that there is a 'canon' of knowledge and practices in the areas we as a society demarcate (Carr 2003:140-1). Whilst that was certainly true in the past, disciplines and subject areas are becoming increasingly blurred with the 'promiscuity' of authors and the hybrid areas of research that more and more seem to bear fruit. Whilst some authors believe that knowledge is something private with information being its public face (c.f. Harris (1998) quoted in Burniske & Monke, 2001: 129) others believe that knowledge is indeed something that can be shared and built upon. If the latter is the case, then knowledge is by definition something that is always changing, as it depends as much on others as it does on oneself to make sense of the world in which we live. To say that the nature of knowledge is changing in the 21st century, then, would seem like an inconsequential statement. But, as Muller (2000:2) writes,
In the traditional sociology of knowledge, knowledge and society were considered to be external to one another, with society acting upon knowledge from outside, bringing interests or values or purposes to bear on it, acting upon knowledge as science might act upon nature, bending it to a superior will. With a better awareness of the reflexivity of knowledge, in both senses, this is harder to sustain. The intrinsic sociality of knowledge, the thoroughly social nature of schemes of classification, not just their vulnerability to outside influence, is what must now be accounted for. (my emphasis)
That is to say the world (in terms of our knowledge of it) is no longer 'out there' in and of itself for us to discover, classify and understand. Instead it exists for us only in terms of our relationships. Knowledge is therefore created through our reflections on the distinctions we observe - for example, x is not y because of z (Muller 2000:2). Our definitions of each of these terms, however, is based upon social interaction and negotiation.

Education systems, on the whole, have unfortunately not responded to this shift in the way that they go about their daily business. Educational institutions need to become not just consumers of knowledge, but producers of it. Instead of focusing on the 'what' of knowledge, they need to focus on the 'how'. As Claxton (2002:32) writes, 'it is the beliefs and priorities that are dissolved in the micro-'how' of the school that matter; not the glitzy new packages of 'what'.' This is represented in diagrammatic form by Carneiro (2002:67):



The what and the why are covered by traditional schooling, whereas the who and the how aspects 'pay justice to the softer aspects of knowledge production, which appear to be highly contingent on social and cultural environments.' The risk, of course, is that educational institutions, threatened by such moves, pay lip-service to this whilst standardizing in the face of the burgeoning nature of knowledge (Delors 1996a:95).

An alternative to the transmission model of education, where students are seen as empty vessels to be 'filled' with knowledge from various repositories (i.e. teachers), needs to be found if 21st century education systems are to be successful in their mission of helping young people to understand, and flourish within, the 21st century world. Instead of the technology available to educators being used to perpetuate the transmission model it should be used to change the nature of teaching and learning. It is pedagogy that defines the successful and relevant 21st century school. Martin (2003:9) quotes the McFarlane report of 1992 which stated that:
Students will have to be taught how to manage their own learning processes to an unprecedented degree. They will have to learn how to swim in a sea of information, to use the rich resources of a supportive learning environment, to self-pace and self-structure their programmes of learning. They will have to choose from a spectrum of learning styles ranging from virtual self instruction under support to group working of various types.
Teachers on this model become like lifeguards. They 'know the waters' as it were, but allow learners to find their own way, rescuing them if they get into difficulties upon the sea of knowledge. The metaphor breaks down, however, in that learners create their own knowledge to add to this vast repository they are able to access, which in turn is shared with others and becomes part of the milieu. To be an educated person on this model means to be someone who swims rather than sinks without the aid of buoyancy devices and without the constant supervision of a 'lifeguard'. Educated people in the 21st century are lifelong learners.

All of this presupposes a more holistic view of learning where barriers between traditional subject areas become thinner and less rigidly defined. What have become known as 'right-brain' approaches - those that stimulate the creative, more irrational side of the brain - need to be developed at least in proportion to those of the left-brain, or 'left hemisphere'. Friedman (2005:307) quotes Daniel Pink:
Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged by data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.
Whilst it remains moot whether knowledge can reside in non-human objects, it is nevertheless true that computers and robots can perform repetitive and precision tasks cheaper and better than humans, on the whole. Instead of producing goods on a factory line, 21st century workers produce knowledge and provide services. To train and educate them for the 20th century industrial world is anachronistic at best. The mantra of the 21st century worker is therefore, as Castells puts it, 'I think therefore I produce' (Muller 2000:33), reflecting a new version of Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl 2001):


To adopt and apply such a taxonomy of outcomes means completely rethinking traditional curricula, and this is far from a straightforward process. 21st century schools need to provide real-world opportunities for knowledge-creation, yet do so in a safe environment and with existing resources - which includes members of staff. Schools are some of the most conservative institutions in existence, serving as they do to provide some kind of commonality of experience which helps 'glue' societies together. The tension, therefore, is between revolution and evolution, ideally based upon the needs of society rather than purely internal contingencies:
...considerations of what disciplines should be included in a school programme and what topics should be taught for the selected disciplines... cannot be done without at least an informal or superficial subject-matter analysis... Ideally, one would want curricular decisions to be based on a more systematic consideration of subject-matter knowledge and its relations to societal practices. (Chaiklin 2002:170-1)
Moving away from predominantly left-brain approaches to learning means that schools have to be run less like businesses or 'sausage factories'. The problem with this for administrators is that it lessens their influence in terms of what goes on in the classroom. As Davis & Williams (2003:268) state, we cannot guarantee minimum standards through any curriculum. We should therefore refrain from an overloading of curricula to achieve all the skills and learning tools that young people require (Delors 1996c:25). School has had to be all things to all men (Carr 2003:8), to prepare students for whatever line of work they enter after departing from the school gates for the last time. Whilst they still have a responsibility to do this to some extent, the knowledge and skills gained in schools will never be enough to last a lifetime in the 21st century world. As a result, what schools need to aim for is relevance. For them to produce educated people in the new sense is to equip them for a life of learning and of sensemaking with the ability to acquire knowledge and skills through connections and collaborations with other people across the world. Instead of inward-looking 'micro-villages', schools should be looking to be as relevant as possible to wider cultures:
Students in schools today are deeply alienated from the curriculum. For many students school presents an alternate reality that bears no obvious connection to the rest of their lives. Some take it on faith that obedient conformity will lead to later financial rewards; many are justly sceptical as to whether that promise applies to them. Schools as institutions are isolated from the mainstream of both public and private life. Far from helping students to understand the village in which they live, schools become micro-villages in their own right, with their own typical activities that are only distantly related to those outside. The range of activities that occur in schools is narrow and impoverished in its diversity compared to the activities that define the reality of the larger village. (Lemke 2002:43)
Whilst it is no great mystery why the subjects and activities in the school curriculum are there, we should not be beholden to perpetuating them for the sake of tradition and familiarity. To put it another way, we should not confuse forms of knowledge with school subjects. As Carr (2003:139) writes:
To some extent, the idea of constructing the school curriculum around forms of knowledge seems to have been precisely designed to address the potential problem of too many subjects in the curriculum. In this respect, of course, it is important not to confuse forms of knowledge with school subjects: thus, whereas geography is one subject, it would be regarded as involving different forms of knowledge (natural science, humanities, moral inquiry), and although physics, chemistry and biology are different subjects, they might be held to be but different modes or aspects of one (natural scientific) form of knowledge.
Educators need to, in a Wizard of Oz-like fashion, pull back the veil on the messy and contingent nature of knowledge for learners to experience the world in a relevant and meaningful way. Delors (1996d) reminds us that many of the problems in 21st century education come from the world outside. For learners to be able to respond and deal with these problems there needs to be a synergy between the world of home and the world of school. In order to do this, the four walls of the classroom have to be knocked down to create what some have dubbed 'flat classrooms': places where learning and knowledge spills out and connects with people across the world. Given the opportunities afforded by modern educational technology and communications this is not some utopian vision of the future but something that is possible today. To create educated people in a 21st century sense schools must be outward-looking and not afraid to allow pupils to take 'smart risks' with their learning, rather than being inward-looking, teaching to the test and remaining conservative and fundamentally inert.

Pulling the threads together, then, an attempt has been made in the above to show that the notion of what it means to be an 'educated' person in the 21st century is fundamentally different from times previous. The changing face of society and the constantly changing world of technology mean that the way in which we interact with one another undergoes continual reconstruction and mutation. The ability to interact, learn and understand the world therefore depends on being able to use the tools available, which in turn is dependent upon what can be called '21st-century literacies'. The nature of knowledge, or at least our understanding of it, alters as society changes, with knowledge-creation being the highest-order skill we should be developing in educational institutions. In order to be a successful learner and an 'educated' 21st century citizen means to swim unaided in the waters of knowledge, waters co-created and socially negotiated so that each can make sense of and be successful in the world they inhabit. Schools, therefore, need to change their curricula in a revolutionary, not just an evolutionary way. The 21st century world needs 21st century workers and learners, not an evolution of 20th century production-line practices and industrial methods. The world has changed: schools need to change with it.

* The information/knowledge distinction is not something I want to discuss at length here. I take information to mean mainly 'data' whereas knowledge is data that has been interpreted or put into some kind of context. Almost everything we come across, therefore is knowledge rather than information.



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